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Educational Management Administration & Leadership http://ema.sagepub.com The Study of Educational Leadership and Management: Where Does the Field Stand Today? Ronald H. Heck and Philip Hallinger Educational Management Administration Leadership 2005; 33; 229 DOI: 10.1177/1741143205051055 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ema.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/229 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society Additional services and information for Educational Management Administration & Leadership can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ema.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ema.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://ema.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/33/2/229 Downloaded from http://ema.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 28, 2008 08 EMA 051055 (to/d) 21/2/05 3:16 pm Page 229 ARTICLE Educational Management Administration & Leadership ISSN 1741-1432 DOI: 10.1177/1741143205051055 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) Copyright © 2005 BELMAS Vol 33(2) 229–244; 051055 The Study of Educational Leadership and Management Where Does the Field Stand Today? Ronald H.Heck and Philip Hallinger ABSTRACT This article comments on the state of research in educational leadership and management as a field of study between 1990 and the present. We discuss the role of research reviews and compendia in the field as a means of identifying past trends, current dilemmas, and future directions for scholarship. We conclude five major points. First, today there is less agreement about the significant problems that scholars should address than in past years. Second, scholarly directions seem to be changing, as an increasing number of scholars are approaching educational leadership and management as a humanistic and moral endeavor rather than a scientific one. Third, although there are more diverse and robust methodological tools available for inquiry, programs of sustained empirical research are few in number. Fourth, a reluctance to evaluate the worth of contrasting conceptual and methodological approaches according to an accepted set of scholarly criteria leaves researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to fall back upon individual judgments of what is useful and valid knowledge. Finally, a lack of empirical rigor in the field continues to impact the development of a future generation of researchers. KEYWORDS educational administration scholarship, headteachers, principals, research on principals, school leaders Reviews of research are useful tools for identifying trends in knowledge development, understanding emerging issues in the field of practice, and critiquing methods used by scholars. Over the past five decades of its develop- ment as a theoretically informed domain of study, the field of educational management and leadership has benefited from a number of useful reviews of research (e.g. Bossert et al., 1982; Boyan, 1988; Bridges, 1982; Erickson, 1967; Getzels, 1973, 1980; Hallinger, 2003; Hallinger and Heck, 1996a, b, 1999; Haskew, 1964; Heck and Hallinger, 1999; Immegart, 1988; Leithwood and Mont- gomery, 1982; Leithwood et al., 1990; Lipham, 1988; Murphy, 1988; Ribbins and Gunter, 2002; Richmon and Allison, 2003; Southworth, 2002; Tatsuoka and 229 Downloaded from http://ema.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 28, 2008 08 EMA 051055 (to/d) 21/2/05 3:16 pm Page 230 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 33(2) Silver, 1988; Willower and Forsyth, 1999). Although the topics of educational management and leadership have generated a great deal of scholarly interest internationally over the years, reviewers have generally suggested it has not been an area given to rigorous empirical investigation and knowledge accumu- lation (Bridges, 1982; Erickson, 1967). The purpose of this article is to comment on educational leadership and management as a field of study, focusing especially on the past 10 years. We look at the field more broadly than in our past reviews of principal leadership. Our goals in this review are to describe changes in scholarly direction as well as to discuss whether cumulative progress noted in the principal effects litera- ture that we documented previously (Hallinger and Heck, 1996a, b) reflects progress in the field more generally.1 The State of Research in Educational Leadership and Management Interest in what managers do (e.g. work activities, decision-making, problem solving, resource allocation) and what they do that makes a difference (e.g. leading change, promoting organizational learning, influencing organizational processes and outcomes) have long captured the attention of scholars (Bass and Avolio, 1994; Burns, 1978; Glatter and Kydd, 2003; Payne, 1875; Senge, 1990; Simon, 1945; Taylor, 1895; Yukl, 1994). Researchers in educational management and leadership have borrowed liberally from scholars who became identified with theories of scientific management, human relations, transformational leadership, and organizational learning during the 20th century. Prior to 1950, however, the knowledge base in administration generally and educational administration in particular was not derived from empirical studies. The field’s disciplinary practices focused on stories told by former administrators and their prescriptions for practice based on personal experience. Concerns were raised in the 1930s and 1940s that educational management was faulty, unimagina- tive, and out of step with community desires (Moore, 1964). Beginning in the 1950s, the ‘theory movement in educational administration’ focused attention on the need to improve scholarly activity through the appli- cation of scientific principles based on empiricism rather than ideological belief, personal experience, and prescription (Getzels et al., 1968; Griffiths et al., 1964; Halpin, 1958). Theoretically driven scientific inquiry would consist of well-delineated means of defining and addressing phenomena, sound research methods to support inquiry, and the creation of a comprehensive body of knowledge that could be applied to problems of practice and inform the initial preparation and professional development of school administrators (Griffiths et al., 1964). The promise of a scientific knowledge base underlying the practice of educational administration, however, was not easily achieved. Over the ensuing decades, the intellectual underpinnings, methods of inquiry, and utility of 230 Downloaded from http://ema.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 28, 2008 08 EMA 051055 (to/d) 21/2/05 3:16 pm Page 231 Heck & Hallinger: Where Does the Field Stand? empirical results of the theory movement came under harsh criticism from scholars operating with a different paradigm (Bates, 1980; Greenfield, 1968, 1978). Bates and Greenfield claimed that behaviorist approaches based on quan- titative analyses were ill-suited to understanding social constructions of school life. Moreover, they failed to consider how contextual, moral, and ethical issues influence administrators’ thinking and actions. Critics concluded that the functionalist and social psychological (behaviorist) paradigms used to understand educational management had yielded limited fruit. For example, Erickson (1967) reviewed empirical studies in educational administration conducted during the 1950s and 1960s and found no evidence of progress on important issues. Fifteen years later, Bridges sought to update Erickson’s findings. He concluded: Research on school administrators for the period 1967–1980 reminds one of the dictum: ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same’ . . . Although researchers apparently show a greater interest in outcomes than was the case in the earlier period, they continue their excessive reliance on survey designs, question- naires of dubious reliability and validity, and relatively simplistic types of statistical analysis. Moreover these researchers persist in treating research problems in an ad hoc rather than a programmatic fashion. . . . Despite the rather loose definition of theory that was used in classifying the sample of research . . . , most of it proved to be atheoretical. Likewise the research seemed to have little or no practical utility. (1982: 24–5) Coincidentally, this scathing critique on the field appeared in the same issue of the Educational Administration Quarterly as another, more narrowly focused, review on principal instructional management (Bossert et al., 1982). Where Bridges’s (1982) review focused on describing approaches to research that characterized the field, the Bossert review laid out a conceptual framework for inquiry and drew a more optimistic set of conclusions concerning the possi- bilities of progress. The reviews documented the need to shift inquiry from descriptions of educational managers’ work and explorations of the antecedents of their behavior to the effects and impact of what they do in managing and leading schools. In the mid-1990s, we undertook a review of empirical research on principal leadership effects, with the broader goal of updating Bridges’s and Bossert’s reviews (Hallinger and Heck, 1996a, b). We found significantly more empirical research in this domain than in previous years, as well as evidence of progress towards higher levels of scientific quality. We concluded that at least some of the key weaknesses noted by the earlier reviewers were being addressed by researchers. This was especially apparent during the latter years covered by our reviews (i.e. the mid-1990s). For example, we noted the wider use of well- delineated conceptual models describing ways educational managers influence school processes and outcomes (e.g. Begley, 1996; Gronn and Ribbins, 1996; Hallinger et al., 1996; Heck et al., 1990; Leithwood, 1994; Leithwood and Stager, 1989; Marks and Printy, 2003; Ogawa and Bossert, 1995) and more sophisticated 231 Downloaded from http://ema.sagepub.com by Roberto Hernandez Sampieri on October 28, 2008
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